If you need a little self-love pep talk today, model Tess Holliday has you covered. The stunning plus-size advocate took to her Instagram feed to share her thoughts about romantic love, self-love and feeling “undesirable” as a “fat” person — or anyone deemed so by conventional beauty standards.
“We are told to lower our expectations because fat bodies are viewed as undesirable and subhuman, and we should be ‘lucky’ to have someone find us attractive, and hell, if we are lucky, truly love us,” the 34-year-old started her emotional caption on February 20, pairing it with a beautiful selfie. “So for me, love was always something foreign, and because of that, I allowed people to treat me poorly because I didn’t fully know how to love myself.”
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L L I D A YThe Mississippi native understands, though, that the key to self-love is time. “I wish I could stand here tell you that loving myself was the only key, and from that point on, I never allowed anyone else to treat me poorly,” she continued. “But that’s not the case. I’m writing this as someone who is learning to let go of the life I had planned so I can make room for the life that’s waiting for me.”
In fact, she even considers being open about where she’s at as part of the journey. “Self-love is a lifelong process, and I still have so much to learn. To recognize myself in the mirror again, to live loudly and unapologetically, to heal and to share all of this with you all,” she wrote. “To me, that’s what real self-love is. To be able to let go of something that was hurting me, and to be able to choose myself, that feels like a new love I’ve never experienced.”
In true Tess form, she closed out her heartfelt advice session with a mantra for her followers. “Now, go look at yourself in the mirror [and] repeat after me: ‘I am beautiful just as I am. I am loved. I am valued. I am not alone. I love you.’ We got this,” she concluded, adding a double heart emoji.
Thanks, girl. This is just what we needed to hear.